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"Tamales...elotes...champurrado...": the production of Latino vending landscapes

“TAMALES…ELOTES…CHAMPURRADO…”
THE PRODUCTION OF LATINO VENDING LANDSCAPES IN LOS ANGELES
by
Lorena Munoz
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements of the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(GEOGRAPHY)
August 2008
Copyright 2008 Lorena Munoz

This study examines the ways in which Latino street vendors exercise their daily, informal economic practices in Los Angeles – a city where many residents (especially Latino residents) favor vendors who recreate the cultural and informal economic spaces of their countries of origin. Funded in part by The National Science Foundation Improvement Dissertation Grant, this study poses three central research questions: First, how complex notions of 'place' and 'sense of place' shape urban cultural landscapes of Latino street vendors in Los Angeles; Second, how local-state enforcements, regulations, and notions of 'illegality' imposed on the 'brown bodies' of the vendors' daily life contribute to cultural landscapes; Third, how street-vendors participate in the informal economy and how the creation of these particular informal landscapes informs their daily life-negotiations relative to their immigrant and employment status. A dialectic process is used to discuss the urban-cultural landscapes, specifically how the state, at various scales, intersects the local; this meeting point is where most tensions are created, primarily through the enforcement of code and regulations, and the surveillance of consumers and producers in the market. These tensions serve to shape the vendor landscapes, while the dialectical process shapes the collective or individual agency of the vendors. In other words, by analyzing the actors, such as vendors, local business owners, and street vendors associations, in relation to the local-state (city council, code enforcers and police department), one begins to understand how street vendors exercise agency. For example, immigrant vending practices commonly transform street corners, yards, and parking lots into informal commercial profit-making sites.; This reconfiguration of urban space not only shapes immigrants' and immigrant vendors' experience of everyday life, but shapes the urban landscape around them as well. By privileging voices of vendors, in particular women, whose daily lives shape and inform the urban landscape, my dissertation links the street corner to interrelated global processes.

“TAMALES…ELOTES…CHAMPURRADO…”
THE PRODUCTION OF LATINO VENDING LANDSCAPES IN LOS ANGELES
by
Lorena Munoz
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements of the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(GEOGRAPHY)
August 2008
Copyright 2008 Lorena Munoz